The current slump in Canada’s housing market may be short lived. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. – with its pulse on the market as the country’s biggest provider of taxpayer-backed mortgage default insurance – expects the housing market to stabilize by July and then begin to pick up steam.
“We see some stabilization as of mid-year and some more momentum at the end of the year and into 2014, and that of course will be related to an improvement in overall economic conditions next year,” Mathieu Laberge, CMHC’s deputy chief economist, said on a call earlier Monday………………………………………..Full Article: Source

China’s rocketing real estate market has decelerated since the State Council announced five new policies in March intended to curb the alarmingly rapid growth. Policies designed to stabilize housing prices and stifle speculation included a 20 percent capital gains tax, higher down payments, and increased mortgage interest rates in heated up markets, as well as curbs on second properties.
Some cities had experienced prices multiplying by factors of 10 recently, causing official concern, and locking prospective homeowners out of the market, CNBC reported………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The number of residential building approvals in Australia fell by 5.5% during March, the largest monthly decline since July of last year. The latest figures represent a disappointing reversal of the growth which occurred in February, according to the Housing Industry Association, the voice of Australia’s residential building industry.
‘The decline in approvals for units was particularly pronounced in March with a fall of 7.7% occurring. This is in comparison to the 4.1% decline in detached house approvals during March,’ said HIA senior economist, Shane Garrett………………………………………..Full Article: Source

A senior figure has predicted a return to luxury home price growth this year despite a mini-crash around the globe in the first three months of this year. Property consultants Knight Frank found that the average price of prime residential units fell by 0.4 per cent in the first quarter of 2013.
Tokyo, Paris and New York all saw 10 per cent falls in luxury home values between the end of December 2012 and the end of March 2013………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Ask ordinary people about their own Chinese dream, and you find owning a home is high on the list. But years of rising house prices have put that dream out of reach of many. A slowing economy appeared to take some of the heat out. Now, alas, the residential property market is soaring again. A new survey of developers and property firms on May 2nd showed average house prices up more than 5% in April on a year earlier.
Taking the long view, rising property values seem defensible. The country is undergoing the largest wave of urbanisation in human history and homes must be built for all of those new city dwellers………………………………………..Full Article: Source

It’s looking like an unsettling spring in Canadian housing, a market that has proven far more even-keeled and less scary for investors in recent years than in the United States.
In what is traditionally the best season of the year for real estate agents, Toronto agent Ecko Jay says the industry is seeing far fewer buyers, a result of tighter lending rules, high prices and fear of a bubble. In Toronto alone, sales dropped 40 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, making homeowners and investors jumpy………………………………………..Full Article: Source

As home prices rise, there are fewer bargains in single family homes, but not fewer investors. Their ranks and property portfolios continue to grow. Last month Five Ten Capital, a Piedmont, California-based asset manager, inked a one hundred million dollar deal with Deutsche Bank to open a new fund to buy and manage single family rental homes, expanding Five Ten’s range to Texas and Missouri.
“Obviously, home prices are up, so did you miss an opportunity? Yes, you’d have been better off buying a year ago than today, but we think for the most part we are in the third inning of this housing recovery,” said Rob Bloemker, Five Ten’s CEO………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Marty Mitchell’s company in Rockville, Md., builds homes priced from $700,000 to $1.6 million. Business is brisk and could be better. Costs of everything from lumber to labor have been rising faster than anyone in the industry imagined only a short time ago.
“We certainly expected some increases as the market improved, but costs have really shot up in the past six months or so,” says the deputy chief executive officer of Mitchell & Best Homebuilders. That’s putting the squeeze on margins even as companies like Mitchell’s raise home prices. As the U.S. housing industry recovers from its worst downturn since the 1930s, builders are having to cope with steep cost increases for various materials as well as rising land prices and shortages of skilled labor………………………………………..Full Article: Source

In most of the world, homeownership isn’t seen as a natural step in the progress toward responsible adulthood. Outside the U.S., mortgages are for small amounts, for shorter times, and have adjustable interest rates. The popular U.S. 30-year mortgage with a fixed rate, which makes possible low monthly payments and a more certain future, is an oddity. How did Americans develop such a peculiar financial practice? The New Deal.
In many ways, the mortgages of the 1920s resembled the more exotic ones of today. Balloon loans with terms of just three to five years were common. Homeowners, like those of the 2000s, simply expected to be able to refinance. The money for these mortgages, in an eerie echo of today, came from debt that banks sold to investors, and the bond-repayment periods were equally short………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The number of homes sold in the UK reached a three-year high during March as increased confidence in the market translated into sales, according to the latest Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors survey.
Chartered surveyors reported selling an average of 17.4 homes over the previous three months, the highest number since March 2010. Confidence has been slowly returning to the housing market since the end of 2012 and transactions have also risen for three consecutive months………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Further evidence of a recovery in the housing market emerged today, with figures showing house prices rose 0.3% in April – the third consecutive month that values have increased across the country.
The monthly survey by Hometrack – which tracks sentiment among over 5,000 estate agents and surveyors – also found demand in London has grown three times faster than supply over the last quarter………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The property market in Italy has been in free fall and people are worried about housing. With most people in the country being too poor for traditional homes or too rich for social housing, the approach of cohousing seems to be the best possible solution. The spokeswoman of the website cohousing.it, Nadia Simionato said that this concept evolved in the northern part of the continent during the 1960s.
It then spread to countries across the continent before reaching Italy in the mid 2000s………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Chinese property buyers have made splashes in the world’s best-known cities. But as their focus shifts toward enjoyment from pure investment, their next stops are likely to be closer to home.
One in eight Chinese families own more than one home, according to a recent report by Zhejiang University and Tsinghua University. But very few own vacation or retirement homes. Typically, Chinese start to amass their real-estate empires with markets they know, often in the cities where they live………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Despite the government’s recent efforts to reinforce cooling measures for the real estate sector, the average home prices across 100 major Chinese cities continued rising in April, according to data released Thursday.
The average new residential home price in the 100 cities in April reached 10,098 yuan ($1,638.91) per square meter, up 1 percent from March and up 5.34 percent year-on-year, according to data from the China Real Estate Index System. Beijing saw its average home price jump by 3.11 percent month-on-month and 15.26 percent year-on-year in April………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Western Australia, Victoria and Tasmania took the housing market cake in March, according to the latest figures from market research group Residex. Each market experienced growth in the house and land market as well as the unit market.
New South Wales, however, was the worst country performer for the month, recording negative growth in both the house and land market and the unit market………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Home prices are rising at the fastest rate in seven years, with some communities seeing double-digit gains, as buyers are returning to a market where the number of properties for sale is in short supply.
Prices increased 9.3% in February from a year earlier while mortgage-interest rates hovered near record lows, according to the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index that tracks home prices in 20 major metropolitan areas. All 20 cities posted year-over-year gains for the second consecutive month, which hasn’t happened since 2005, before the crash………………………………………..Full Article: Source

More good news on the housing market. The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price index posted its biggest annual increase since 2006—just before the housing market crash.
Home prices in all 20 metro areas included in the index rose for the second month running. Phoenix led, with a 23% annual increase followed by San Francisco (18.9%), Las Vegas (17.6%) and Atlanta (16.5%). Still, Robert Shiller, co-creator of the index, is cautious. “There’s a lot of excitement in the housing market now but it might be just short term,” he tells The Daily Ticker………………………………………..Full Article: Source

U.K. house prices were little changed in April, according to Nationwide Building Society, which said there are signs of momentum in the property market.
The average cost of a home fell 0.1 percent from March to a seasonally adjusted 165,586 pounds ($257,000), the Swindon, England-based customer-owned lender said today. From a year earlier, prices rose 0.9 percent, the biggest annual increase in 14 months………………………………………..Full Article: Source

House prices recorded their strongest annual increase in more than a year in April, amid further signs that the market is seeing a pick-up, Nationwide reported.
The 0.9 per cent year-on-year rise took average prices to £165,586, and activity is likely to strengthen further in 2013, the building society’s latest study said. On a month-on-month basis, prices dipped by 0.1 per cent following a flat March………………………………………..Full Article: Source

After almost nine years of continuous house price rises, the Viennese housing market remains buoyant. However, house price rises are now slowing.
The residential property price index in Vienna, the capital, rose by 13.09% (10.02% inflation-adjusted) during 2012, its ninth consecutive year of continuous house price rises, according to Oesterreichische Nationalbank. However on a quarterly basis, house prices in Vienna actually dropped 0.65% (-1.61% inflation-adjusted) in Q4 2012, its first quarterly drop since Q2 2011………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The fledgling recovery in the Australian housing market stalled in April as property prices drifted lower. Home prices across Australia’s eight capital cities fell by half a per cent in April, partly reversing gains made since the start of 2013.
Prices rose by an average of 2.8 per cent in the first three months of the year, according to the RP Data-Rismark Home Value Index………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The realestate.co.nz website says the housing market is very much a sellers’ market. It recorded that new listings of houses available for sale fell 21% in April following a 3% decline in March.
The website, on which about 95% of the houses available for sale in New Zealand are listed, says new listings are far from matching demand with sales across the country up 11%………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The U.S. housing market is no longer a basket case. Data from the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices show that average home prices in an assortment of American cities have been on the upswing, increasing by almost 7 percent across the country in 2012. Recent reports that sales of new single-family homes rose in March are proof points that “the housing market recovery remains on track.”
Nicolas P. Retsinas is a Senior Lecturer in Real Estate at Harvard Business School, Director Emeritus of Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, and former Federal Housing Commissioner………………………………………..Full Article: Source

More Americans than forecast signed contracts in March to buy previously owned homes, another indication of progress in the housing market.
The index of pending home sales increased 1.5 percent after a revised 1 percent decline the prior month that was larger than initially reported, figures from the National Association of Realtors showed today in Washington. Economists forecast a 1 percent increase, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey………………………………………..Full Article: Source

After a long and painful downturn in the housing market, home prices are finally beginning to head north. According to Zillow, a real estate listing website, home values rose 5.1% across the United States between February 2012 and February 2013.
Many local housing markets are performing considerably better than the country as a whole. Home values rose more than 13% in 10 of the 30 largest housing markets for which Zillow has data, and rose more than 20% in five of them. The biggest growth of all took place in Phoenix, where home values rose 24%………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The real estate market has flipped from a buyer’s market to a seller’s market in just a short time. While there are still great deals to be had, buyers need to be more creative, savvy and educated about their local housing market to land the home of their dreams.
Housing inventory is down 40 percent or more from two years ago in some markets, and that means stiff competition for the best houses. But there are methods to beat other buyers to the property you covet, some conventional and some more unusual………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The recovery in the housing market is continuing its slow and steady recovery. The most recent data point showed pending home sales rising by 1.5% in March which reverses the February decline. According to the National Association of Realtors the pending home sales index increased to 105.7 in March from the 104.1 it hit last month. This represents a solid 7% year-over-year increase for the index.
Overall, the association’s chief economist, Lawrence Yun, pointed out that “contract activity has been in a narrow range in recent months, not from a pause in demand but because of limited supply.” He sees closings ending up modestly as the year progresses. All of which points to continued modest gains for a housing market that’s been lackluster for the past few years………………………………………..Full Article: Source

House prices in England and Wales increased by 0.1% in March, according to the latest Land Registry report, but the headline figure disguised a mixed pattern of rises and falls around the regions.
London continued to record the strongest growth, with prices rising by 2.5% in March alone. The annual rate of price growth in the capital hit 9.6% and the average price reached £374,568. In contrast, prices in Middlesbrough fell by 5.1% in March and were down 16.5% year-on-year to an average of £69,049………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The supply decreased by 4.4% in the secondary housing market of Baku. Public organization “Property Market Participants” informs that totally 5,700 apartments were proposed for the market in March.
“Last month, 78.7% of the portfolio of the secondary housing market was formed from flats in Yasamal, Nasimi, Narimanov and Khatai districts of Baku, which is associated with the transition of apartments from the primary market to the secondary market in these districts,” PMP said………………………………………..Full Article: Source

According to Cluttons, a real estate consultancy, the increase in rent is due to demand outstripping supply for the first time since the global financial crisis.
Apartments in popular areas such as Al Majaz, Al Nahda and Al Qassimiya saw an average rental increase of 10 to 15 per cent since October 2012. In areas such as Sharghan, Al Fisht and Al Falaj, villa rents went up a similar 15 per cent due to strong growth in demand and a lack of quality stock………………………………………..Full Article: Source

In the year to March, residential property prices at a national level, fell by 3%. This compares with an annual rate of decline of 2.6% in February and a decline of 16.3% recorded in the twelve months to March 2012, according to the CSO today. Residential property prices fell by 0.5% in the month of March. This compares with a decrease of 1.5% recorded in February. Prices were unchanged in the month of March of last year.
In Dublin residential property prices fell by 0.8% in March but were 1.4% higher than a year ago. Dublin house prices fell by 0.3% in the month but were 1.5% higher compared to a year earlier………………………………………..Full Article: Source

In March 2013 the government revealed plans to build 174,000 new houses and three separate cities by 2020, two near the Iraqi border in the north, and one on the Saudi border in the south. Although no official price tag has been given for the project, estimates put the cost at around $5bn.
Under Kuwaiti law, the country’s 1.2m nationals are entitled to apply for government housing after marriage, receiving loans that are paid off in small instalments over 30 years. However, despite the state’s $400bn oil surplus, applications for housing now outstrip supply by more than 100,000 and will grow by an estimated 8000 applications each year, local media has reported………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Confidence in the housing market among homeowners has soared to its highest level in three years, a property search website has reported.Almost three-quarters of homeowners (74%) expect house prices in their area to rise by September, with the predicted increase averaging 4.5%, in further evidence that the market is starting to “turn a corner”, Zoopla said.
Both the proportion of people forecasting house price increase and the typical size of the anticipated increase are the highest figures recorded in around three years by the quarterly study, which began in 2009………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Even as U.S. housing rebounds from its worst downturn since the 1930s, production bottlenecks are pushing up building-materials costs, land prices are rising and skilled labor ready to begin work is hard to find.
Suppliers of glass, drywall and wood products, who reduced output during the slump, are testing the vigor of the rebound by boosting prices before committing to restore capacity. Builders, including Lennar Corp. (LEN), Toll Brothers Inc. (TOL) and KB Home, are asking homebuyers for more money as a result or are delaying sales, posing a temporary hurdle for the industry that has become one of the pillars of the economic expansion………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The U.S. real estate market is in a “state of free fall” despite the U.S. government and big banks manipulating the market to stabilize it, says Mike Harris, financial editor at Veterans Today.
On Wednesday, the Washington Post said that according to a report from the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, American homeowners who received loan modifications under a federal government program are defaulting on their mortgages at an alarming rate………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Online real estate marketplace Zillow has brought to home buying and selling what a previous generation of travel websites provided to shoppers wanting to compare the prices of hotels, rental cars and airline flights — transparency. But finding data that is reliable across the board can be difficult, according to Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff. And the key is not just simply to offer the information, Rascoff said during a recent conversation with Knowledge@Wharton and Wharton real estate professor Susan M. Wachter; it’s about the various sub-models the company’s software incorporates.
Zillow has a database of more than 110 million U.S. homes that includes homes for sale and homes for rent. It also incorporates Zestimate, which helps calculate home values. Zillow is the leading real estate website, Rascoff notes, but only about 12% of Americans have heard of it………………………………………..Full Article: Source

An ongoing rebound in the new home market is leading to better sales of building materials like roofing as well as new appliances, two CEOs told CNBC.
“We had a great quarter in roofing,” Owens Corning CEO Michael Thaman told CNBC’s “Street Signs” on Wednesday. “We’re seeing insulation, despite the fact that it’s losing money, move back into profitability. And we think composites will begin to turn the corner in the second quarter and improve in the second half.”……………………………………….Full Article: Source

The modest decline in existing home sales in March in Monday’s update from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) prompted some pundits to wonder if the housing rebound is topping out. Anything’s possible, but the reason why sales slipped in March suggests that the market’s suffering from growing pains rather than facing a cyclical turn for the worse.
The issue to consider is the supply of existing homes for sale. Although the inventory of units for sale turned up slightly last month, for the second time in a row, the rise follows several years of falling supplies. Demand, however, keeps rising………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Swiss home prices are likely to start drifting down, says Wüest & Partner in its latest report on the Swiss real estate market. The company is an international real estate consultancy firm that regularly produces reports on its home market.
“In the coming months, demand for commercial properties is expected to flatten in response to sluggish economic growth. The residential markets are overall robust, but likely to enter calmer waters in 2013 compared to the previous years,” the company’s “Property Market Switzerland 2013/2, published 23 April, forecasts………………………………………..Full Article: Source

That along with the planned US$1 billion GCC aid will also contribute towards the nation’s social and infrastructure development programme and in the coming months the residential lettings market is expected to experience a surge in supply.
Cluttons, the real estate specialist which has been operating in the Middle East since 1976, says that several major residential developments will be brought to market over the next six months, including those being built under the government’s housing programme………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Non-landed private property owners have earned a total of S$107 million in gross profit from reselling their properties after project completion since the first quarter of 2012.This is according to a research report by property agency OrangeTee.
The report noted that property owners who had invested in the prime residential sector reaped the highest return in dollar terms, with an average profit of S$410,000 per unit.Meanwhile, mass-market property owners in the Outside Central Region (OCR) had the highest average percentage capital gain of 41 per cent………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Luxury condominiums and even landed property may face a 5%-10% price correction this year in response to a slower occupancy rate last year.This does not, however, mean that property prices would start to tumble as overall mass market housing would be able to sustain slower growth.
According to real estate services provider CH William Talhar & Wong managing director Foo Gee Jen, the occupancy rate among luxury condominiums in Kuala Lumpur registered only 67% last year, which was “not a very healthy sign”………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Sales of new U.S. homes advanced in March as near record-low mortgage rates helped the industry complete the strongest quarter since 2008, putting the economy on firmer footing.
Purchases of single-family properties climbed 1.5 percent last month to a 417,000 annual pace, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. The median estimate of 76 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for March sales to rise to 416,000………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Housing’s long-awaited recovery has him recalling his younger days. About “18 months ago, the industry was nothing much to look at: dilapidated foreclosures were flooding the market, home equity had suffered the worst retrenchment in a generation, and housing starts and sentiment were far below historic troughs levels. But after stabilizing in 2012, both new and existing home prices are now accelerating much more rapidly than in the 1990s cycle.”
Mr. Kim tells Developments that his dad gave him the vehicle and the engine cracked after it was driven too hard………………………………………..Full Article: Source

U.S. house prices rose 7.1 percent in the year through February, the biggest gain since 2006, indicating a solidifying recovery as buyers compete for properties amid tight inventory.
Prices climbed 0.7 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from January, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said in a report today from Washington. That matched the average estimate of 16 economists, according to data compiled by Bloomberg………………………………………..Full Article: Source

U.S. house prices rose 7.1 percent in the year through February, said the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) on Tuesday, indicating an increasingly confirmed recovery as many other housing indicators also suggest that the rebound in homebuilding activity is on firm footing.
The overall U.S. economic activity, however, signal some moderation in the first quarter of this year, partly due to the impact of government spending cuts under the sequester………………………………………..Full Article: Source

The housing market continued to trudge towards a recovery in March, with rising construction starts and falling foreclosure and delinquency rates bringing market conditions closer to those of a balanced one, according to Trulia’s Housing Barometer.
The barometer summarizes three key housing market indicators — construction starts, existing home sales, and the delinquency-plus-foreclosure rate — looking at how current conditions compare to those recorded at the depths of the housing crisis and those recorded before the housing bubble………………………………………..Full Article: Source

After many years of talk, there is finally some action in the build-to-let market. Prudential’s recent modest return to the housing sector after a 30-year hiatus is hugely symbolic; it welcomes a former mainstay back in the door and illustrates they have the confidence to invest once more in housing.
There was a time when almost everyone rented their home. From the end of the first world war until the proliferation of home ownership in the 1980s, most people rented either from the government or from a large institution such as Prudential………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Shanghaiist is pleased to present this exclusive excerpt from Landed China: Key Local Knowledge You Need When Buying Property, by Christopher Dillon. Christopher is an award-winning author who has previously written about buying property in Hong Kong and Japan.
As this book went to press, many people were debating whether China was in the middle of a real estate bubble. The answer to that question is complex and a lot is riding on it………………………………………..Full Article: Source

Australia’s housing market appears to be in the midst of a recovery, with prices rising at their strongest level for more than two years in many capital cities.
The new figures come as a senior Reserve Bank of Australia official cautioned on Tuesday that market conditions were shifting to a ”new normal” where price growth would be slower than the country had witnessed over the past 30 years………………………………………..Full Article: Source